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Edgar Allen Poe The Bells and The Raven |
In the late forties or
early fifties my father thought of illustrating Poe's The Raven
and The Bells. The project never worked out and the book was
never published. Of the twenty five illustrations which would have been
included I have ten. |
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My father invented his own "engraving" process. Instead of applying an engraver's needle directly to the zinc plates he prepared cellophane sheets with a special solution he could draw on directly. In this manner he could create his engravings as if he were drawing on ordinary paper and employing a mixture of light and acid applied the sheets to the plates, leaving the finished impressions. The proofs for most of the illustrations above have disappeared. And I used the original cellophanes to make these reproductions. The two reproductions which were not taken from the cellophane sheets can be detected because they appear more evenly dark brown than the others: they are of the raven in the window and the illustration of an open book in a man's hands. Like photographic negatives, the blacks and whites on the cellophanes are reversed.
He also employed this technique for many of his illustrations for the Gulliver and the Cervantes. The secret of how he accomplished this process appears to have gone with him to the grave.
Other illustrations for unpublished books American Printmakers On-line Catalogue Raisonne Project: The Prints of Luis Quintanilla
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